


Cold

by Racethewind_10



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Racethewind_10/pseuds/Racethewind_10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name, someone is yelling her name and the pain starts to recede, falling away until it’s just uncomfortable and not unbearable. Breathing, she’s breathing. She can breathe again and Emma gasps, shaking uncontrollably and muscles seizing as she forces her eyes to open and her lungs to draw air. </p><p>Fix it fic for 4x02</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

> I mean honestly. The amount of bullshit that show will go through not to have Regina save Emma. But that's what fic is for. Regina saves Emma from Elsa's ice prison thingy (whatever that badly designed mess of polystyrene was supposed to be)
> 
> Thank you dealanexmachina for the beta and for putting up with me suddenly not knowing wtf I was doing with the ending.

Accompanies [this gorgeous manip](http://racethewind10.tumblr.com/post/102051253021/saving-you-saving-me-swan-queen-hi-res)

 

* * *

 

 

Emma is getting really, really sick of almost dying. It’s becoming common. It's becoming a  _thing_  and she is so very tired of it. Or maybe she's just tired. It's hard to tell. She can't feel her hands or her feet or her face anymore and what she can feel burns but in all the wrong ways. Her lungs don't feel right, they haven't for a while now and it’s so hard to force air into them, she thinks it might be easier if she just stopped trying. 

Part of her knows that's wrong. That little animal instinct voice that's kept her fighting her entire life is screaming at her now, telling her to get up, to move, to keep going, but it’s so very far away, distant like Elsa calling to her, like Elsa and that little angry voice are somewhere else and she's all alone in this endless, grey, burning cold. 

If she weren't so tired she'd cry, because she’s dying (again, and that really, really needs to not be such a thing although at least this time it’s not because she’s going to get eaten by a dragon or killed by a flying monkey or an ogre so maybe she shouldn’t complain) and she’s failed at being the Savior once more, and she's alone. Her son, her parents, her friends, Killian and...whatever Regina is to her are all far away beyond the ice wall she couldn’t destroy. Far away like Elsa's pleading, far away like that little voice telling her she's a coward for giving up. 

And then even Elsa's begging stops and Emma can't remember how to make her lungs work anymore. She can't decide if the grey she's seeing is the ice or if her eyes have stopped working and wow did she not want to freeze to death. Saviors aren't supposed to die quiet and pathetic in some damned accidental ice trap for no reason. She was supposed to go out a hero right? That's how these things worked.  Emma wasn't stupid, no matter what Regina might think. She'd read her fair share of fantasy novels and slogged through the classics in middle and highschool. Heroes died saving people. Saviors had limited shelf lives. It was part of why she fought so hard to not believe in Henry's book, why even now it was safer to imagine she was just ordinary, just a regular girl stuck in some ridiculous Disney advertisement. Not a hero. 

And Emma Swan isn’t a hero, no matter what her son and her parents want to think. Heroes were good and noble and made all the right choices. Heroes sacrificed. Heroes saved everyone else. And heroes died. 

Emma's made a lot of crappy choices and she's hurt as many people as she's saved but apparently, she's going to die anyway. And it's wrong, because she hasn't done what she said she would. She didn't get Regina her happy ending. A hero would have done that. But Emma's not a hero, but she is dy…

But what she is slips away, her mind fracturing like the ice under her hand, thoughts chaotic as a reflection in a broken mirror and just as hard to hold onto as the shards of glass that fall from it. She sees Henry, the hurt on his face as he reads a small piece of paper. She sees her parents and her brother and a raven with something on its leg. She sees a flash of metal in the shape of a hook and her father’s eyes. She sees dark, dark eyes full of pain.

She can't tell if she's breathing anymore but that's okay. It doesn't hurt now.

Not really.

As the darkness rolls in Emma’s last clear thought is that she broke her promise to Regina and heroes don’t do that…

 

* * *

 

She wakes screaming, body on fire, nerves in agony and she's screaming screaming screaming

"Emma, Emma! Emma _stop_!" 

Her name, someone is yelling her name and the pain starts to recede, falling away until it’s just uncomfortable and not unbearable. Breathing, she’s breathing. She can breathe again and Emma gasps, shaking uncontrollably and muscles seizing as she forces her eyes to open and her lungs to draw air. 

"R....R'gina?" She blinks and blinks again because that can't be right. Regina can't be here, looking at her like that, dark eyes full of fear and face pale in the eerie blue light reflecting off the ice. "Y're here?" her lips are hard and clumsy but she has to know this is real. 

"I'm here, Emma," Regina replies and there's a hand on her cheek and another on her hip and that touch is so gentle and warm, so warm Emma whimpers. She can feel the magic sliding under her skin again, leaving flickers of pins and needles in its wake and the taste of oranges on the back of her tongue but it isn’t as strong as the sense of relief, of safety that follows the heat flowing through her. Questions like ‘how’ and ‘what’ die before they ever make it to her lips but Emma doesn’t care because Regina is here and that means they’re all safe.  

"Shh, you're going to be alright, I just…I had to get your heart started again. I'm going to move us now," Regina says and her voice, even her voice is warm but it sounds like it shakes, or maybe that’s just Emma, her body shuddering violently now.  She can feel oblivion tugging at her again and she tries to fight it, doesn't want to let go of this moment where Regina is here and looking at her and not running away, doesn’t want to let go of that feeling of safety that she’s only now realizing how deeply she’s come to associate with the other woman.  

"I' s'rry" she slurs just before a familiar swirl of purple claims them both. 

The next thing Emma knows her body is being cradled by a stupidly squishy mattress. She feels – or thinks she feels it’s hard to tell – magic on her skin again and her boots and jeans and jacket are gone, replaced by – she shifts, testing – thick sweats and socks. The cold is starting to come back though and Emma tries to make her arms cooperate, reaching for covers she knows are here, somewhere.

“Lie still,” Regina is back from wherever she’d been and Emma forces her eyes, one at a time because motor control is still not her thing, to open so she can watch as the other woman lifts the thick down comforter from the foot of the bed and pulls it up to Emma’s chin, smoothing it with a practiced touch that makes Emma think Regina has done this before with Henry. It makes her throat go tight. She wants to ask Regina to stay, to please not go and leave her again but her lips and tongue won’t work and her eyes prick with tears frustration.

Regina must see, or maybe she’s just being kind, but the bed dips under her weight and she sits next to Emma, reaching out and brushing her fingers across the chilled woman’s forehead, flickers of magic like flames spreading out from her touch sending that delicious heat flowing through Emma’s veins again. Green eyes fall shut and Emma’s body finally, finally begins to relax, wire tension of her muscles unspooling until she sinks deeper into the mattress. And Regina doesn’t leave.

“Thank you,” Emma whispers when her mouth is finally working again. She licks dry lips, marvels at the simple action. Opening her eyes reveals Regina still seated by her side, fingertips combing tenderly through the fine hair at Emma’s temple, each touch sending another pulse of warmth through Emma’s entire body leaving her loose-limbed and content.

Regina makes a noncommittal noise but her expression is gentle, dark eyes soft and full of something Emma can’t quite grasp.

“I’m sorry,” Emma bites her lip, guilt stealing through her beneath the warmth. She’s supposed to save people, not the other way around. But Regina just sighs softly.

“Your idiot father should have called me immediately, we almost…that was too close.” There is something under the words, something raw and vulnerable that Emma doesn’t understand, but she’s too tired to try and tease it out. Instead she just shrugs, looking away, shame at her earlier need for Regina’s presence crawling up from her chest until she shifts, trying to sit up, to get away from that feeling of failure. She can’t meet Regina’s eyes, too afraid of the judgment she’ll see there that she knows she deserves.

“Maybe but…you shouldn’t have had to come save my butt, I know you don’t want to see me, I know that’s not fair.” She’s trying but she can’t find the strength to sit up, her body drained beyond reserves and with one last effort Emma surrenders, her shoulders slumping back into the mattress. “You shouldn’t have had to,” she sighs.

The gentle fingers on her chin startle her, but she doesn’t resist when Regina turns her head. Those dark eyes are pure black in the dim light of the bedroom but there is nothing cold or hard or angry in them. The corner of that beautiful mouth pulls up just the slightest bit into a weary smile.  “Someone – someone very irritating but sometimes very wise – once told me that good people come to the rescue, no matter what.”

Emma stills, stunned, echoes of the past washing back like ripples on a shore and god they’ve come so far Emma can barely trace the path from that smoky angry night to here, where she’s lying in Regina’s bed, warm and safe and longing for something she’s terrified to name lest it break her.

“Do you really think I want to lose you too?” Regina asks softly, so softly Emma can barely make out the words, and then she struggles, her brain refusing to accept them because no, Regina is angry at her, Regina blames her.

“Yes, I am, and yes, maybe I do,” Regina replies, making Emma realize she spoke that last out loud. “But if there is one thing you and your irritating parents have taught me,” Regina smiles briefly and it looks almost fond before the expression slides away from her face into something heartbreakingly open. “It’s that being alone forever is not the answer. You’re important, Emma. You’re family.”

That longing in her chest pulls harder, makes Emma want to reach out and touch Regina, bring her closer but she can’t. Not yet. She doesn’t deserve that yet.

“I never meant to hurt you,” Emma manages.

“I know,” Regina says simply.

“I meant it, about fighting for you,” Emma swallows because this was easier when there was a door between them. Easier when she couldn’t see the way sadness has pulled at Regina’s shoulders and weighed down the corners of her mouth so that they barely lift at all when Emma speaks.

“I know,” and she sounds tired but…calm. The jagged edges Emma remembers so vividly from the moments outside the diner are gone, smoothed out into weary acceptance. There is no anger in the way Regina looks at Emma, in the way her hand still cups Emma’s cheek and Emma wants, oh she wants to reach up and lay her palm over that hand but she wonders if Regina even realizes what she’s doing and so she stays still and takes a different kind of gamble.

“You’re not a villain.”

For the space of too many heartbeats Emma thinks she’s misread, that’s she’s gone and shattered whatever it was that was building between them…but then one perfectly sculpted eyebrow climbs toward Regina’s hairline. “I know,” she drawls and Emma smiles because the edges of Regina’s lips are curving up, fondness and irritation mixing on her face into something familiar and wonderful.

“I know,” Emma says softly, holding that dark gaze.  “And I won’t forget.”

There is the merest brush of a thumb across her cheek and then Regina takes her hand away and sits up straighter. “See that you don’t, Miss Swan,” she replies, a hint of starch in her tone. Emma grins, then yawns, her body rapidly voicing its need to rest without Regina’s magic supporting her.

 

“Get some sleep, you can have breakfast with Henry and I tomorrow morning.”

 

“Thanks R’gina,” Emma thinks she manages. As sleep pulls her down into darkness she feels the covers being tucked gently around her.

 

“You’re welcome, Emma.”

 

Fin


End file.
